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Brig Enterprise, February, 1835

The Enterprise was an American merchant vessel that shipped slaves along the ASSESSMENT
Atlantic coast. However, Britain had abolished slavery throughout its Empire INDICATOR
including in Bermuda a year earlier.
Imagine you are a slave on the
On February 11, 1835, bad weather forced the Enterprise into Hamilton. It carried Enterprise on February 11, 1835.
78 slaves in appalling conditions. The majority were free Americans who had been Write a short story about how you
kidnapped into slavery. It became the centre of an international incident when the came to be there, and how you
authorities freed nearly all the slaves.
feel now as you are about to be
Bermudian customs officers called a gunboat and Royal Navy officers to detain the freed. Don’t forget to include the
ship when the captain of the Enterprise threatened to leave. Richard Tucker, the new facts you have learned.
president of the Young Men’s Friendly Institution, intervened and the slaves went
before the Supreme Court to choose whether they would continue as slaves on
the ship or remain in Bermuda as free persons. On February 18, from 9pm until
midnight, the court heard each slave. Seventy two of the 78 slaves chose to go free.
Only a woman named Matilda Ridgely with her five children chose to return to the
United States. Some descendants of people on the Enterprise still live in Bermuda.
This case contributed to tensions arising between the US and the United Kingdom
over the question of slavery, though in the 1853 Treaty of Claims the US and the
UK agreed to settle a variety of claims on the freed slaves.

We Arrive
By Chesley Trott
Barr’s Bay Park
Collection of the City of Hamilton

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